Advice regarding walking

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pb6012002
pb6012002 Posts: 54
in Fitness and Exercise
I walked a total today of about 3.18 miles throughout the day (I calculated it on mapquest) with 1.52 miles of that in a row. Do I calculate that as excerice and if so how can I figure out how many calories I burned.

I do not have a pedometer or HRM. Thanks in advance.

Replies

  • MountainMia
    MountainMia Posts: 242 Member
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    Great job on getting your move on. As a general rule, if I do something I would normally do before MFP, even if it's not every day like shopping, house cleaning, packing the kids to and from stuff, playing at the park ect., I write it off as part of my activity level that's already accounted for in my goal. I only count intentional exercise or big things like skiing or hiking, shoveling snow or heavy yardwork... even though I've done those before MFP, they are far less frequent and easier to account for because there is specific time and intensity estimates that can be more acurate.
    It's really hard to estimate calories burned without knowing the intensity or how long you were actually working. You did well for your body to move more, but to count it as cardio, your heart rate generally needs to be above 120 at the low end and you would probably break a sweat. If that didn't happen, chalk it up to a more active day and it will come out in your favor in the end. Hope this helps.
  • TDGee
    TDGee Posts: 2,209 Member
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    It would depend more on your pace. Faster walking burns more energy than a slower pace.
  • douglasmobbs
    douglasmobbs Posts: 563 Member
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    you can either divide the distance by 2 or 3 to approximate how many hours you walked for and log it as walking at 2 or 3 miles per hour.

    MFP does work out your basic calorie rate depending on your activity level so I would not count walking about during my usual activities, saying that accurately monitoring your calories out is only really important if you eat back your calories.
  • treetop57
    treetop57 Posts: 1,578 Member
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    Especially if you have your activity level set to sedentary, I would definitely count it. If it took you an hour or more, enter it as "walking 3 mph.". If it took less than an hour, count it as "walking 4.0 mph."
  • douglasmobbs
    douglasmobbs Posts: 563 Member
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    It would depend more on your pace. Faster walking burns more energy than a slower pace.

    erm?

    calories burnt walking is dependent on distance.

    Weight in KG * distance in KM = energy burnt in KJ to move an object
    typically people are about 25% energy efficient whilst walking so multiply the KJ result by 4 to get the amount of KJ you have burnt.

    1 kilojoule = 0.238845897 calorie (nutritional) so use that to convert KJ to cal.

    Or alternatively work out how far you have been walking, convert that as I said above and use the MFP calculators.
  • pb6012002
    pb6012002 Posts: 54
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    Thanks to everyone I worked out for the total it took me to walk my furthest distance twice. Since I did it going and coming without stopping. Normally I wouldn't even log normal walking, but I was feeling a bit under the weather last night and didn't feel up to doing my workout dvd and didn't want those calories to go un-calcluated
  • Fani2003
    Fani2003 Posts: 195 Member
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    It would depend more on your pace. Faster walking burns more energy than a slower pace.

    Really? I thought according to physics it was based on distance and your weight?

    weight x distance = energy used
  • Fani2003
    Fani2003 Posts: 195 Member
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    Thanks to everyone I worked out for the total it took me to walk my furthest distance twice. Since I did it going and coming without stopping. Normally I wouldn't even log normal walking, but I was feeling a bit under the weather last night and didn't feel up to doing my workout dvd and didn't want those calories to go un-calcluated

    I am using a FitBit and it tracks everything I do (not heart rate, just steps and activity level) and I am very pleased. It then syncs here on MFP and does that calc so you do not lose those calories.

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